Marcie Ratliff/Winonan

It seems winter, fireplaces and poetry go well together.

At the Athenaeum last Wednesday James Armstrong, professor of the advanced poetry class at Winona State University, said that his class this spring has grown into a writers’ community.

“I have a DVD of a fireplace burning, and we’ve been playing this in class. It’s a symbol for the kind of intimacy we’ve had, which I’ve really enjoyed,” Armstrong said.

April is poetry month, and Armstrong’s poetry students gave listeners a poignant reminder of that at the final Athenaeum of the semester.

“We’ve been doing this for four years now, this Athenaeum piece,” Armstrong said. “It’s a big step to read poems aloud.”

After Armstrong’s introduction, the students read their work and had a time for questions after the reading.

Ted Holland, who described himself as “the world’s oldest living undergrad,” said he writes at the Blue Heron, a restaurant near downtown Winona, several days every week.

Holland started writing poems about 15 months ago. So far, he’s written 835, and being in class discussions has changed the way he writes poetry.

“I was kind of a slave to rhyme and rhythm, and this class freed me from that bondage,” Holland said.

Kate Barrett, another student, said the class “expanded my repertoire of poetic subjects and my definition of what can be a poem.”

Students credited the fireplace for the safe space they created in class over the semester, but also mentioned the input they’ve received from each other.

“The give and take is really important,” Holland said.

Barrett said, “There’s a culture in our class of positive criticism, and it’s an option whether or not to take criticism.”

Part of Armstrong’s vision for the class is to show students that for poetry, the process is more important than the product.

Armstrong said a weakness of workshops can be “the illusion that you apply everyone’s advice and then you have a finished work.”

“What you really want is honest feedback,” he said. “But often you have to sit and mess with a poem for a long, long time.”

Contact Marcie at [email protected]